


Shoulders

by spindleofwords



Series: It Takes Them Four Years and Maybe Nearly Dying [2]
Category: Static Shock
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-06
Updated: 2013-01-06
Packaged: 2017-11-23 22:08:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/627029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spindleofwords/pseuds/spindleofwords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe the someone else is doing a little noticing of their own, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shoulders

FRESHMAN YEAR

They say someone touching your shoulder is a sign that they’re in to you.

Richie touched his shoulder a lot. Virgil never really noticed it before…certain things were explained to him, but a lot of the time, Richie’s long-fingered agile hands and muscled arms were clapping him on the shoulder, slinging an arm around him, messaging tension from his neck and shoulder blades, using him as an armrest, all kinds of ways; just touching his shoulders.

And Virgil was the same way. The way he greeted his friend every day as they walked down the halls of school was to sling his arm around the pale boy’s shoulders and keep them there, even upon entering class. And he had never really thought about it.

But maybe it was true; because the more Virgil saw of Richie, really _saw,_ the more he liked. 

(This realization of liking came a couple years after the fact, of course; Virgil denied it to himself for longer than he needed to after being teased for it in middle school when he had first met Richie, so he never really considered it an option.)

Yet, as much denial as the boy was in, he never once attended a school dance with a date. Not a girl, anyway. Remembering back, Virgil noticed he had never, not once, taken a girl to a dance. It always seemed like so much fuss, matching shirts and suits and dresses, lots of hair and makeup talk, buying tickets, inviting friends, dealing with Sharon’s teasing….it was so much easier to hit Rich with a folder in homeroom and ask, “Hey, you wanna stop by the dance next week?” and wait for Richie’s nod and slow, mischievous smile. It wasn’t like they both didn’t try to pick up girls, they just…weren’t good at it, or so they thought.

Virgil remembered one dance in the freshman year of high school that he and Rich had blown up. They were rockin’ that night, looking hella fly and feeling confident for once; they had been to enough middle school dances to know the scene. 

They even had a routine for picking up chicks; Richie liked to call his the Shy Guy routine, where Virgil would go over to a girl for Richie and tell her all about his poor cute little blonde friend who thought she was so pretty but couldn’t come over because he couldn’t quite work up the nerve to talk to her, so if she minded, would she dance with him once? And then he’d point out Rich and Richie would be watching with wide brown eyes behind his glasses and meet their gazes only to quickly turn away and blush furiously (on cue, the little genius).

And Virgil played it smooth and hard and fast; Richie would slink over and hit on a girl crudely, calling her shorty and trying to feel her up until Virgil came over in a fit of heroics and told him to stop disrespecting such a wonderful girl with such pretty eyes. 

And sometimes they’d bust or, with increasing frequency, they’d get hits; but the fun of it was doing it with Richie. So maybe when he was dancing with a pretty little girl and talking her up he was wishing her smile and laugh and eyes were Richie’s, was wishing that he was talking to Richie instead of trying to dance with this girl who didn’t even know who Plant Man was, but he dealt because it was the working together that was fun, not the spoils.

But at this dance something had changed.

During one of his Shy Guy shifts, Virgil had looked over as he pointed out his friend and stopped abruptly in his mind, his mouth still working the lines but his eyes and thoughts stuck on his blonde friend. His attractive blonde friend who filled out his dress shirt and slacks in ways that he hadn’t ever, really. 

As the girl nodded slowly with a smile (smarmy and gross) and walked over to Rich to talk, putting a hand on his shoulder (his nice shoulders, his nice shoulders that made his shirt pull tight when he moved his arms and _don’t touch him you whore_ ), Virgil was left dumbstruck as he wondered when Richie had started to fill out and he hadn’t noticed. Little hints showed; the dress shirt pulled a little over his chest, not to bursting but a snug fit; the sleeves were rolled up to better accommodate his arms that flexed every time he moved them; and then the hard, bruising, straight line of his _shoulders_ , causing the sleeves to pull tighter still and the back of his shirt to ride up a little. Had they always been that broad?

“V?”

Virgil snapped out of it only when he saw his blonde friend jogging up to him with a grimace.

“Bad choice on my part, man, she was desperate and too easy…You okay? You look like you wanna hit something.”

Virgil nodded slowly, not taking his eyes off of Richie, swallowing against a suddenly dry throat.

“I’m fine.”

Richie raised his eyebrows, obviously unbelieving as he tilted his head to look at Virgil closely, his earring gleaming under the gym lights, his skin pink and shining with a soft sheen of sweat in the crowded gym.

“You don’t look so hot, man. You wanna bounce? I’m not really feeling tonight, anyway.”

With a monumental effort, Virgil tore his eyes away from the line of Richie’s shoulders and smiled weakly at him, motioning towards the door.

“Actually, let’s go. I’m really feeling some video games right about now. I just got that new shooter, if you’re interested?”

Shooters were always a weakness of Richie’s, and Virgil nearly felt bad for exploiting that but he couldn’t manage to feel bad at all when Richie’s attention was all on him, focused and worried and caring. And besides, it was worth everything he had just gone through to see Richie’s face lit up in a real smile for the first time tonight as his friend pushed him towards the door, hands firmly on his shoulders.

“Call your dad and let’s leave already.”

Virgil only laughed with an agreeing nod and wondered what was wrong with him.

**Author's Note:**

> There's a movie out there about The Temptations, guys, and they use this "Shy Guy" routine. It's called the Five Heartbeats and it's pretty good, but I have to give them the credit here, for this ingenuity.


End file.
